Soccer-Euro-Ukraine, Russian fans scuffle in Lviv

LVIV, June 9 Russian and Ukrainian soccer fans
scuffled briefly in the streets of Lviv in the early hours of
Saturday after watching a Euro 2012 game in the city's fan zone,
eyewitnesses said.

Around 15 Russian fans, delighted at their side's impressive
4-1 win over the Czech Republic, left the zone and started
shouting and swearing at a smaller group of Ukrainians, said
Reuters photographer Marian Striltsiv.

The two sides exchanged a few punches before local police
quickly moved in and separated the combatants. No arrests were
made.

One picture taken by a local agency showed a man with blood
streaming from his nose.

Police denied there had been any violence and said they had
prevented the two sides from fighting. Tensions between the two
nationalities are particularly high in Lviv, in the far west of
the country, in part because of Ukrainian resentment at Soviet
rule from 1939 to 1991.

The Lviv region was the centre of a resistance campaign by
Ukrainian nationalists fighting for independence from the Soviet
Union during and after World War Two.

One of the main nationalist leaders was Stepan Bandera, a
man still widely regarded as a hero in western Ukraine and as a
bandit by Russia. Fans of local soccer side Karpaty Lviv always
show a huge banner of Bandera during home games.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren, editing by Justin Palmer)